N.U.T. Box 1.0 - Electronic Foot Percussion

Back in the early days of the blues, musicians would often sit on their porch and vent their problems in the form of song. Strumming their handmade cigar box guitar and tapping their foot on the boards of their porch to add rhythm, they would sing about trifling women, drinking, fighting, and the quest to keep their head above water. Since those early days, the music changed. Blues musicians signed contracts with record companies and traded their cigar box guitar for an early Gibson or Martin guitar. The lowly porch boards were cast aside and replaced with drummers. As the music became electrified over the years, it started to walk away from its roots.

Skip ahead a few decades. Though the cigar box guitar was still waiting in the wings for its time to shine once more, the porch boards began to make a resurgence. They had been removed from the porch and replaced with the boards of the stage. Regardless of what musical style was being played, guitarists of all types tended to tap their foot when they played to keep time. Folk singers, Appalachian bands, country western acts, indie musicians, acoustic rock bands, singer/songwriters and others started to stomp on the stage to add an extra element of percussion to their music.

Moving ahead to the present day. With the economy in the toilet right now, the traditional Delta blues is starting to make a comeback. The tightening of America's and many other countries around the world's purse strings has left many musicians without the resources to afford expensive equipment. More and more guitarists are stepping away from the rest of the band and playing solo. But what are they doing to compensate for the lack of percussion? Some use drum machines, others get their percussion from the guitar itself, but what of the rest?

A few years ago, a couple of instrument makers in Australia discovered that if you embedded a transducer pickup and an audio jack in a hunk of wood, you could amplify the sound of tapping your foot on it and recreate a bass drum type of sound. This idea spread to Europe and the Americas a little while later. However, despite the simplicity of the design, these "acoustic stompboxes" have a few quirks that the builders haven't ironed out yet.

For starters, some of the designs are a nightmare for sound engineers. Feedback is a major issue they have to contend with when setting up. Add to this, the tendency of these designs to rely on small rubber feet to keep the unit in place. Though good in theory, if the floor has any kind of smoothness to it (like most stages), the rubber feet tend to lose their grip and cause the unit to "walk away" from the guitarist as he taps his foot on it. Some sound engineers and musicians have kind of remedied this second problem by using Gaffer's Tape to hold the unit in place. However, the stomp boxes still tend to move even with the extra grip provided by the tape. The feedback is often caused by these same rubber feet. Since they take up so little of the surface area on the base of the unit, they don't provide any noise-dampening and if anything amplify the noises from the stage because of the hard rubber construction. For example, most guitar and bass amplifiers and cabinets are placed directly on the stage. Regardless of what you do, some of the vibrations caused by the speakers will be transmitted through the stage itself. If there isn't any attempt to dampen this vibration, it will be carried up into the stompbox and picked up by the pickup inside. Also, the sounds of other band members or roadies can also potentially be transmitted through the stage to the pickup.

A few months ago, I set out on a quest to create my own version of an "acoustic stompbox" or "foot percussion pedal" that solves these problems. Since the rubber feet tend to be the root of the matter, I removed them from the design entirely. Instead, I chose to use a non-skid soft rubber pad that covers the entire base of the unit. Because the pad covers the entire base of the unit, the likelihood of it moving by any means other than kicking it is practically non-existent. Also, since it is made of soft rubber instead of hard rubber, the inherent nature of the material will dampen any vibrations caused by outside influences.

To further set my unit apart from other designers, I opted to use actual tone woods for the construction instead of the Gum woods, Beech, and other "pretty" woods that are used in other stompboxes. Maple tends to be more acoustically transparent than other tonewoods. On the other hand, black walnut tends to add a more "woody" tone that accentuates the bass and treble.

The dimensions I chose were based on portability and ease of use. By making the unit 4.5" wide, 5.5" long, and 1" thick, it is able to fit in just about any gig bag or guitar case without any problems while still allowing a large enough surface area for tapping even the largest foot on top of it.

Compared to the $100 to $500 that these other designers charge for a unit with feedback and sliding issues, the N.U.T. Box Version 1.0 is currently available at an introductory rate of only $25.


It's available for purchase through either my Etsy store or eBay seller account.

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Streamline Era iPhone Design

The Back Story

After several months of living without a cell phone earlier this year, my family and friends finally pestered me enough about not being able to get a hold of me that I broke down and decided to get a new phone a little over a month ago. The cost of Verizon was the main reason I stopped my cell phone service in the first place, so I was shopping around to find the cell phone provider with the least Draconian policies and lowest rates without destroying any chances for decent coverage.

Somehow, I must have gotten infected by the Steve Jobs flavored Kool-Aid, because I got it stuck in my head that the next cell phone I would own would be the iPhone. Unfortunately, with the data plan that is required with the iPhone, I would be looking at about a $100 per month cell phone bill if I got it through AT&T. The 2 year contract didn't sound like much fun either. Paying AT&T about $2500 over the course of 2 years ($100/mo. x 24 mos. + $100 for the 8GB 3G with contract) for cell phone service was not my idea of a good time. The cost and contract were not fitting into my ideal cell phone needs.

One day, while cruising the internet, I found out that you could unlock an iPhone and use it on T-Mobile. I've never really been a fan of T-Mobile in the past, but from talking to friends with their service, it seemed that they had gotten better at not sucking over the years. Back in November, they started up the Even More Plus plans that save you from dealing with a contract. This was a definite bonus. For about $40 a month (less than half of AT&T's cost), I could get 500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends (starting at 7PM instead of Verizon's 9PM), and unlimited EDGE speed data (there's also unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile, but I couldn't care less). Most phone calls I make are either after 7PM or during the weekend, so it was looking like I found my new cell phone company. Now I just needed the actual phone.

I decided to look for a used 1st generation iPhone (also know as the iPhone 2G), since the iPhone 3G and 3GS aren't compatible with T-Mobile's 3G service (and even if they were, I'd have to pay $25 a month instead of $10 a month for data). After a few weeks of searching, I finally found and won an 8GB iPhone on eBay that was in well cared for condition for less than $200. After having service for a little over a month now on the phone, I can honestly say that I'm relatively impressed with both T-Mobile and the iPhone.

The Point

Now the that back story is out of the way, it's time for the point of this post.

Though I enjoy the general styling of the iPhone itself, I think the design and shape of the back of the phone (and just about every other cell phone for that matter) is too minimal and boring. It's not ugly. It just seems like it's missing something as far as the design is concerned and it was only worsened with the iPhone 3G and 3GS and their stale plastic backs. Too make matters worse, the smooth slippery nature of the design, makes it easy to drop the phone accidentally without some sort of a case or covering over the phone.

During the height of the Futurist/Streamline/Machine Age movements in the 40s and 50s, nearly everything had a certain sense of sculptural style to it. Even toasters (like the one pictured below) had class. You could look at an item and see the craftsmanship that went into designing and making them both functional and oddly beautiful at the same time.

This got me thinking. How would I change the design of the back of the iPhone to give it the same elegance as the commonplace objects from bygone days without destroying the pocket friendly nature of the device? I know that there are skins out there that you can apply to iPhones to change the look of them to fit your personality or tastes better (and I originally went at this concept with the idea of designing a skin), but in the end it's really just a sticker. Nothing more.

I went ahead and posted the basic design I worked up below (in case you'd like to get a GelaSkin made with it). Because I was originally thinking of the design from the skin concept, I didn't include the spot for the camera or side buttons in the design, but you should get the general idea.

To give you a more accurate depiction of how it would look, here's a shot of the design applied as a GelaSkin to the iPhone (courtesy of the GelaSkins Custom Skin creator).
If I were more skilled with metalworking, I'd actually modify the back of my iPhone to look like this. The ribs and central vertical bars would be chrome, while the rest would be brushed aluminum. Even though it would kill the pseudo-self portrait mirror nature of the Apple logo, I think it would look great in a glowing green or blue color (like the ones you find on Mac Books). The design would also lend a more functional element, since the horizontal ribs would provide some extra grip to the phone while holding it (without the need for a bulky case). I might go ahead and order the design as a GelaSkin (even though it is just a sticker), until I can find a metal worker with enough skill to re-manufacture the back of my phone with this design worked into it.

It's an idea...

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